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Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

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241–250 of 426 posts

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#241
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you want exactly, but it sounds like what i3 and Sway already do. Workspaces are created as needed and are specific to that monitor, so if workspace 3 is on the right monitor, you can jump to it with super-3 even if you're on the left monitor. You'd be looking at workspace 3 on the right monitor plus another workspace like 1 or 2 on the left. Each monitor displays a separate workspace…

Being able to select desktops/workspaces per screen is half the solution. The other half is allowing the selection to come from a pool of desktops/workspaces common to all screens. i.e. the opposite of what i3 and Sway do. So given desktops/workspaces a, b and c and screens 1 and 2, the following combinations are possible: 1: a; 2: b 1: a; 2: a 1: c; 2: a ...

You can absolutely do this in i3 or sway. There aren't default keybindings for doing it, but it is easy to set up your own. I set $mod+equals to 'move workspace to output up' in i3 (or something like that -- I'm not on that machine to check). This works for me since I set up my external display to be above the laptop screen, so it effectively means 'move this workspace to the other output'. You could also specify a specific output to move to, or change what the direction is.

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#242
post #205

What is extremely annoying to me is that all these companies make ultra wide monitors without increasing the horizontal resolution. Why would anyone want an ultra-WIDE monitor with exactly the same resolution as a 4k monitor. The T E X T L O O K S S T R E T C H E D! They need to increase the horizontal resolution when they increase the width of the monitor to add value over a regular shape monitor with the same resol…

I can only imagine this being the case if someone has their desktop resolution set wrong. The panels have square pixels, so increasing the horizontal size necessarily adds more pixels.

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#243
post #201

Not sure about "no longer worrying about that pesky 80 column limit"... For once, I have an ultra wide monitor, and having 1-2 files of code, a terminal and a space for testing and research all next to each other is quite great. Furthermore, I'm probably getting too old, but I find line length limits really helpful for readability: When you start to wrap those long lines, it kinda makes you think about introducing so…

I feel exactly the same about the column limit (PEP 8 advocates for 79 chars). It forces me to organise my code better one line at a time, and I'm convinced it makes the reading faster.

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#244
post #20

I prefer to work with a single large external monitor. If my device is a laptop I keep it in clamshell mode when attached to an external monitor. I find switching applications with keyboard shortcuts and focusing on one thing at a time has improved my productivity. Using two or more monitors made it so easy for me to get distracted. To each their own though.

> Using two or more monitors made it so easy for me to get distracted.

I have a desktop with three monitors and a laptop with one, and I don't notice any difference in distractibility. It's a discipline problem, not a technical one, and so you should solve it on a personal level and not a technical one.

I mean, think about it. If you "unlock" the ability to use multiple monitors at once without getting distracted, "it's free real estate" - you have more space to work with, and there's empirical evidence to suggest that that results in increased productivity. Programming involves a lot of consulting documentation and using multiple tools at once - it's very amenable to multiple monitors (as opposed to, say, writing a novel).

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#245
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to excuse the mess :) https://imgur.com/a/5uTm7VB Also obviously I hid all the proprietary stuff.

woah thats bonkers! What do you do with all that real estate?

Pretty much the standard tools that most people have open all the time I guess. I just want to see them all all the time without having to constantly switch windows or hide the thing I'm working on.

Music, messenger, Discord, Slack, 2 or 3 instances of my IDE, source control UI, a terminal or three, documentation for the thing I'm working on, notepad++

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#246

This is interesting but the author considers only one degree of freedom, "roll". Equally important are "pitch" and "yaw". "pitch" is necessary to accommodate another kind of rotation, known in HCI as "slouch". "yaw" is important because sometimes your code is so elegant and impressive, that you need people walking by to see it more than you need to see it yourself. You use yaw to rotate your monitor away, toward the…

Could stretch the "yaw" into a "yawn" which is the typical response when you showcase your elegant and impressive code to family and friends.

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#247
post #232

'Tis a bit of a silly article, I'd go insane trying to keep my application windows in the sweet spot for viewing them at a 22 degree rotation. One thing strikes me that I've wondered about when I would rotate some of my monitors: the color shift/viewing angle issue. I can understand in older monitors that have different viewing angles for horizontal and vertical, but some of my monitors over the years have been 176 d…

At first I thought this is a satirical article but then I realised the author was serious. I still think this ~22° rotation is utter nonsense.

I am pretty sure it is satirical, or at least not meant to be taken super seriously.

> It provides the longest line lengths and no longer need to worry about that pesky 80 column limit.

You don't need a monitor at a 22 degree angle to eliminate 80 character line limits ;)

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#248

Clearly there's a market for S-shaped monitors. You get the benefits of two landscape sections, two portrait sections, a central 45d section, and two small 45d sections, useful for putting notifications in. Kidding aside, I just have 2 gaming monitors on either side of my MBP, in landscape. A screen for monitoring prod, a comms screen, and a code screen. When needed I slide out a coding window to another monitor. I a…

My setup in the office is a screen dedicated to Outlook, a screen for my code, and a screen for documentation and chat.

I know some people in the office who made one or both of the side screens vertical, but that doesn't work for me. Vertical means I'm tilting my head or my eyes up and down which doesn't feel great. Also horizontal side monitors are in my peripheral vision, vertical side monitors extend too far up to be in my peripheral vision.

I wouldn't want my center monitor to be vertical because then I couldn't easily put code side-by-side. I'd need to take over one of the side monitors which then would mean looking between them requires looking off-center and with a gap from the bezels.

Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

#250
post #201

Not sure about "no longer worrying about that pesky 80 column limit"... For once, I have an ultra wide monitor, and having 1-2 files of code, a terminal and a space for testing and research all next to each other is quite great. Furthermore, I'm probably getting too old, but I find line length limits really helpful for readability: When you start to wrap those long lines, it kinda makes you think about introducing so…

Fully agree on column limit. I don’t have a hard limit set, but when I start to need to scroll horizontally on a file in a dual-pane 2560x1440 setup, it forces me to refactor things out into dedicated variables and functions, reduce nesting, reducing chaining, etc. On an ultrawide I think things would quickly get out of hand.
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